Returning villager brings the world home with her

Friday

Aug 17, 2012 at 2:00 AM

Centerville has been her village since her childhood – a summer dream of penny candy and ice cream and Craigville Beach.

Ellen Chahey

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

UP WITH PEOPLE – An international cast of one hundred young adults, dressed in their native costumes, will perform music and dance at Barnstable High School Aug. 24 and 25. Centerville’s Anna Griswold is helping to promote the show and find housing for the cast, who also will perform community service for the week they will be here.

Griswold’s involved in civic affairs

Centerville has been her village since her childhood – a summer dream of penny candy and ice cream and Craigville Beach. Now Anna Griswold, a full-time resident of the village and the mother of a 4-year-old, wants to give back not only to Centerville, but also to the global village.

Griswold’s parents bought a summer home in Centerville when she was a child, and later retired to it, but Griswold moved around, landing in such places as Rhode Island and Euro Disney in France, where she learned to speak French well. “My French was at about 70 percent when I got there,” she said, but immersion in the language at the park got her fluent so that she has served as a substitute French teacher at the Sturgis Charter Public School in Hyannis and as a tour guide around the Cape to a group from Quebec.

Her mother comes from Denmark, so Griswold always has had an interest in travel and culture, said this board member of the Centerville Civic Association. “I like the idea of leaving your life to do something different,” she said.

Griswold seems a natural fit to volunteer with the organization Up With People, which since 1965 has gathered young adults aged 17-29 years to travel in stints of six months or one year to live with host families, do community service, and put on a multicultural stage show of music and dance. Griswold has been working with the three-person advance team that is finding lodging and service projects for the 100-person cast, who arrive on Monday and who will offer their show at Barnstable High School on Aug. 24 and 25.

While the young people are here, they will do community service – mostly landscaping and painting – at CapeAbilities, Heritage Museums and Gardens, the YMCA, and Cape Cod Child Development. They will also offer a dance workshop for children, and an international costume fashion show at the Pavilion skilled nursing facility in Centerville.

Even at this late date, hosts are still needed for the Up With People cast, who come from as far away as Nepal, said Linda Chen, a promotion manager. Chen, from Taiwan, is an alumna of the program and said she joined because of the opportunity to stay with host families. She said that one of her host families on this trip has given bed and board to more than 140 young adults, most from Up With People.

Chen said that Up With People was founded in 1965 by J. Blanton Belk of Tucson, AZ “as a positive voice for young people during a turbulent period in the United States.” Although details could not be confirmed, Chen had heard that the first performance ever by Up With People was on Cape Cod, possibly because of its connection with the Kennedy family. Up With People last performed here in 1999. On this tour so far, said Chen, five Centerville families will host a cast member.

When Up With People leaves the Cape on Aug. 27, Griswold, a district sales manager for the Friendly’s restaurant chain, will resume her focus on a Centerville pet project: the playground renovation.

“I played at that playground myself, and now so does my 4-year-old son,” Griswold said.

She works with Aaron Webb, Steve Luciani and others to raise funds for the renovation of the playground on Main Street near the church and library and recreation building. She has had yellow bags printed with a logo for the Centerville Playground Project. “Steve gives me the money” to buy more inventory, she said, “then I sell them and return the money with profit” to benefit the playground.

Griswold spent her summer days in Centerville with “no TV – just board games” and the other diversions that children can enjoy in the village, and now is raising a son she hopes will enjoy all the same pleasures. “It was a light bulb moment to decide to leave” where she was living to make a new beginning where a lot began for her – in Centerville.

Up With People performs Friday, Aug. 24, and Saturday, Aug. 25, at 7 p.m. at Barnstable High School. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for students, seniors, and children, in advance; $25 the day of the show. Family four-packs are sold for $60. The show benefits the Rogers and Gray Charitable Foundation. Tickets are available from Rogers and Gray offices in Hyannis and Dennis, or at upwithpeople.org/CapeCod

Host homes are still needed to provide a bed, breakfast, and dinner and limited transportation for cast members for a week. Contact Linda Chen at 303.681.1471 or lchen@upwithpeople.org. She can also arrange interviews for people aged 18-29 who would like to know more about joining an international tour.